Benjamin Britten arrived in north America in 1939 – talented, idealistic and hungry for success. One of his first creations was the fanfare Young Apollo, inspired by Keats’s ‘new dazzling sun-god, quivering with radiant vitality’, a work of consistent and almost overwhelming brilliance. Young rising star pianist and 2010 BBC Young Musician of the Year Lara Melda performs the solo sections this evening. At the other end of his life Britten became preoccupied with the recollection of times lost. His Suite on English Folk Tunes is a touching act of homage to both the country he felt so rooted to and the tradition of folksong to which he owed so much. Guardian of Britten’s very distinct vocal tradition Ian Bostridge sings the composer’s savage view of man’s inhumanity to man, the visceral song cycle Our Hunting Fathers.